Q Despatch, a specialist private car hire operator based in London, has chosen to implement Echo, the real-time scheduling and dispatch platform developed by Magenta Technology, the creators of Addison Lee’s Shamrock platform.

The Echo real-time scheduling and dispatch platform was chosen over other options because being on-time and reliable are critical to Q Despatch’s service delivery within the public and private sectors. These include NHS critical-care patient transportation both within the UK M25 and UK-wide, regular NHS patient movement, special needs and vulnerable people transportation – all of which have to meet strict time tables. These services demand service excellence and a rigorous customer focus well beyond that normally required. Accordingly, Q Despatch is registered as Compliant by the Care Quality Commission, probably has the highest percentage of wheelchair accessible vehicles in London, and all drivers have had significant additional training.

Given Q Despatch’s exacting scheduling requirements, Echo’s feature-rich operational platform was exactly the solution they needed. With its unique to the private hire market scheduling technology, it enables very precisely calculated ‘dynamic response times’. Its sophisticated scheduling technology manages, in real-time, not only the forecasting of where and when drivers will be available after their ‘job in progress’, but also dynamically schedules those drivers on future pre-booked jobs to provide realistic response times for ‘on-demand’ queries – so that every driver can reliably be on time.

Nick Pavlou, Director at Q Despatch, commented: “I have been looking for an intelligent automated despatch programme for a while. I believe that controllers should be looking after our clients and helping our drivers, rather than working out which is the closest car to a job. Let the computer despatch the work. Our clients demand more than just a standard service and measure us against our KPIs. With Magenta’s help I believe that we can constantly achieve above the KPIs set. I also believe that our drivers will earn more with less dead mileage.”

Matt Borland, Sales Director for Magenta Technology commented: “We are delighted that Q Despatch quickly saw the benefits of Echo’s robust, reliable and ﬂexible technology, especially the unique ‘dynamic response time’ functionality, enabling them to deliver a great service for every customer, every time, with accurate pricing. We are confident that moving to Echo will be instrumental for Q Despatch in achieving their business growth targets with more efficient use of their existing resources.”